A publisher is an entity that owns and/or manages a web site. Using analytical services offered by third parties, the publisher can monitor analytical data related to user visits and links to the web site. Example analytical data includes data related to domains and/or web sites from which visitors arrived and to which the visitors departed; traffic patterns, e.g., navigation clicks of visitors within the publisher's web site; visitor actions, e.g., purchases, filling out of forms, etc., and other actions that a visitor may take in relation to the publisher's web site. The analysis of such analytical data can inform the publisher of how the visitors were referred to the publisher's web site, whether an advertising campaign resulted in the referral, and how the visitors interacted with the publisher's web site. With this understanding, the publisher can implement changes to increase revenue generation and/or improve the visitor experience. For example, a publisher can focus marketing resources on advertising campaigns, review referrals from other web sites, identify other publishers as potential partners for cross-linking, and so on.
One example analytical system that provides analytical tools that facilitate the collection and analysis of such analytical data is provided by Google™ Analytics, available from Google, Inc., in Mountain View, Calif. To use such systems, a publisher typically provides tracking request code embedded in its web pages. Typically the tracking request code is a snippet of JavaScript™ code that the publisher adds onto every page of their web site for which traffic is to be tracked. When the page is requested by a user device, the tracking request code determines if the tracking code is stored in a browser cache on the user device. If the tracking code is not stored in the browser cache, the tracking request code requests and downloads tracking code from an analytics server. The tracking code is then stored in the browser cache on the user device and executed.
The tracking code collects visitor data and sends it back to the analytics server in the form of a tracking data communication for processing. The tracking data communication includes an account identifier that identifies an analytics account of the publisher, a visitor identifier that identifies the visitor (i.e., a computer device that is used by a user to access the particular page of the publisher), and event statistics, such as whether the visitor has been to the web site before, the timestamp of the current visit, referrer data identifying the referrer site, campaign data identifying the advertising campaign the visitor came from, and other event statistics.
The tracking code sets one or more corresponding cookies in the visitor's browser, and the cookies include the visitor identifier. The cookies are used to store information related to the tracking data communications, such as the number of times the visitor has been to the web site, the time of the current visit, referrer data, and campaign data. The cookies that are set by the analytics system do not, however, include personally identifiable information; instead, identifiers are used to identify tracking communications reported from a particular device.
Publishers, on the other hand, may often collect personally identifiable information (“PII”) from users. For example, assume a publisher is an on-line retailer, and requires users to establish accounts to purchase products on-line. Each account for each user may store personally identifiable information, such as the user's name, the user's address, the user's gender, an identifier that the publisher issues to uniquely identify the user, etc.
Publishers would like to examine the analytics data for various customer segments to determine behavioral characteristics of customers that belong to each segment. For example, an online retailer may have many customers that frequently purchase goods through its online purchasing service, and may also have many customers that in frequently purchase goods through its online purchasing service, or perhaps never purchase goods through its online purchasing service (e.g., users that establish an account but then never purchase goods). Likewise, the publisher may have many visitors to its website that never establish an account.
However, processing analytics data by customer segments may expose additional personally identifiable information to the publisher. Likewise, providing personally identifiable information to the analytics system may expose the analytics system to personally identifiable information that it does not collect.